Fact of the day

Information is the most powerful weapon.

Monday

Fact N°
1875

On average, each person in the U.S. receives about 34 gigabytes of information into his home each day.

According to research out of the University of California at San Diego and published in The Economist, each U.S. household receives on average about 3.6 zetabytes of information each day (or 34 gigabytes per person), the huge majority of which is made up of video games and television. About half of those bytes are received interactively, according to the report.

Tuesday

Fact N°
1876

On average, internet users have 17 different password-protected accounts.

This statistic is derived from a poll of over 13,000 subscribers to Consumer Reports. These same respondents also reported that the No. 1 most common problem they face on the computer is forgetting a necessary password or PIN number. That said, a close second was getting "an incomprehensible computer error message."

Wednesday

Fact N°
1877

FDR borrowed the term "New Deal" from Mark Twain.

President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," which ran from 1933 through 1937 amounted to one of the largest socioeconomic programs in the history of the United States, if not the largest, all in an effort to get the U.S. out of the Great Depression. FDR took the term from the 1889 Mark Twain novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Thursday

Fact N°
1878

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first coined in 1964.

The dreaded Bermuda Triangle, which extends from the southern end of Florida to Puerto Rico to Bermuda and back to Florida, has been the subject of endless speculation regarding the mysterious disappearances of ships and planes. It was first mentioned in a 1950 AP article, but it wouldn't get the name it's best known by until a 1964 article in Argosy magazine by a writer named Vincent Gaddis.

Friday

Fact N°
1879

The most lethal part of a triathlon is in the water.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined 14 sudden deaths that took place between 2006 and 2008 during triathlons, 13 of them happened during the swimming leg. None occurred during the running leg, while one triathlete died in a bike accident. Officially, all deaths from swimming were listed as drownings, but several of those that died had "cardiovascular abnormalities" that contributed to their deaths.

Saturday

Fact N°
1880

The "Human Camera" can draw a massive cityscape from memory after just 45 minutes.

Stephen Wiltshire, the "Human Camera," has a rather severe form of autism, but his memory is astounding. He has been flown by helicopter over both Rome and London, seeing the cities from above for no more than 45 minutes, then sat down and over the course of three days, drew the entire cityscapes from memory.

Sunday

Fact N°
1881

The marbled lungfish has the largest genome of any known biological species.

The human genome is composed of about 3 million base pairs (meaning letters in its DNA sequence). Carsonella ruddii is a bacterium that has the smallest known cellular genome, with just 160,000 base pairs. The marbled lungfish, meanwhile, a fish shaped like an oversize eel, features a stunning 133 billion base pairs, a DNA sequence over 40 times larger than that of humans.